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Meet Lecturer Kasey Keeler

A Native American Studies postdoctoral fellow, Kasey Keeler analyzes suburbs as historically Indian places. Her research focuses on a demographic analysis of U.S. Census data, historical archives, and an auto-ethnography based on her experiences as a suburban Indian to challenge common narratives of suburbia and to underscore the participation of American Indians in the process of suburbanization.

Keeler is transforming her dissertation into a book project examining the suburbs of Minnesota’s Twin Cities— Minneapolis and St. Paul. Examining the last decades of the 19th century and the start of World War I, as well as the policies that shaped suburbia and Indian Country after World War II, her research reveals how the federal Indian policies of Relocation and Termination prevented American Indian suburbanization and homeownership, challenging traditional narratives of suburbia.

Keeler received her Ph.D. in American studies from the University of Minnesota (2016) and earned her B.A. in political science at the University of Wisconsin (2005). She has received fellowships from the University of Minnesota’s Institute for Advanced Study and the American Indian Studies Department, as well as from the Newberry Library in Chicago. While a graduate student she also held a dissertation doctoral fellowship and participated in the Newberry Library’s Consortium in American Indian Studies summer institute. As she works on her book, Keeler will teach Native American Studies courses on federal Indian policy, literature, urban Indians, and popular culture.